The settings in this section of the Membership Product editor determine how the product purchased changes the member’s expiration date. Key points to remember…
- Members do not see this expiration date anywhere. The only time they would be aware there is an expiration is if they expired (for example, they hadn’t paid their dues in a timely manner).
- Expiration dates are used by our Mass Invoice module to determine who needs to get sent an invoice. Simple example – if you invoice in the Spring of 2025, and a member’s expiration is still anytime in 2025, they would get an invoice. When a member pays, their expiration would be sometime in 2026, and they would not get another invoice that season.
- Expiration dates can be changed en masse. So even if your membership’s expirations were all set to different dates, you could change them using our database tools to a single date.
The three Expiration options look like this…
- Expires Buyers on Annual Date – This newer option is now recommended for most memberships (other than August-Only types). All buyers will be set to a common date, after the upcoming Summer season. So even if your club invoices in the Spring but some buyers pay as early as December, the software figures out the appropriate expiration date for everyone.
- Extends Expiration by # of Days – This was our recommended method before we added the option above. Most annual memberships would simply push the buyer forward 365 days from their purchase date. The buyer’s expiration date will then be sometime in the next year, and everything magically works great with our invoice system. If this value is 0, the next option can be enabled instead.
- Force Expiration to Specific Date – This option allows you to set the buyer’s expiration to a date of your choosing. For most memberships you don’t need to micro-manage that date (as they can all be changed easily at once after your invoice season is over). That said, you would definitely want to set a specific date if the membership inherently had an end date like an August-Only membership.
Setting the Buyer to Inactive
The last option in this section allows you to set the buyer to Inactive. This marker on their account means they are still a member but can’t do most member things (like reserve courts or check into the pool). Having this option for a membership undoubtably sounds counter-intuitive, but some clubs allow members to take a year off if they pay a fee to go on hold.
In that case, the membership product could be called something like “On Hold Membership”. This Set buyer to Inactive property is set to Yes, and most likely their Expiration is set to a normal time forward of 365 days later. The purchaser is not expired, but they are inactive. During that time, they could optionally still receive newsletters to be informed of club-related things.
This setting could also be used for pre-August sales on an August-Only membership. For example, if someone purchased the membership in July, they would immediately become Inactive. Then on August 1, someone using our database tools could remove the Inactive marker on all the purchasers of that product.
Expirations and Recurring Billing
If your product automatically rebills indefinitely, the Extends Expiration by # of Days should be the same as the billing period PLUS a few days in case of a failed payment. For example, a product that sets up a yearly billing cycle should extend the expiration 370 days (not 365). A never-ending monthly cycle should extend the expiration 35 days (not 31). This will give the buyer time to pay from an automated email that lets them know their payment failed, but they can still access their account to complete the order on their own.
Important – If the product is an Installment Plan, for example, they are paying their dues over 3 months, we highly recommend setting the expiration to using the Expires Buyers on Annual Date option, as if they had paid the full amount. Keep in mind…
- It will be rare someone paying in installments self-cancels their upcoming payments.
- If one of their upcoming installment orders failed to re-bill (for example it was declined), the system will prompt them via email many times to pay. Anyone with treasurer access will eventually see these Past Due payments in the Financial Dashboard
- As noted earlier, members do not see this expiration date in their account anyway.
- Even though the member is paying in monthly installments, ultimately they are paying for a year long membership so their expiration will eventually need to be that of non-installment payers.
